Eye opening

For some weird reason, I couldn’t get to sleep last night. I fell off right away as usual, but woke up after less than an hour and just…stayed awake. It was horrible.

I tried reading, watching a few videos, and even thinking about my tasks at work here (which almost always helps me sleep for some reason; they’re not boring tasks, but when I think about them I drift right off). Nothing worked though. I don’t know what I did different or wrong, but I was almost wired last night. It was after 2:30AM when I finally fell asleep, with my alarm destined to chime at 5:40AM.

And the sleep I did get was broken sleep. I woke up at 3:35AM for some stupid reason. Fell back off a few minutes later, but still. Then 4:36AM (yes, I checked the clock), which is a real pisser knowing you’ve got to be up in an hour. Finally the alarm went off.

To make matters worse, my back pain today is off the hook. I could barely make it to the car, and then I had to scrape the frost off. Fun stuff. Now I’m supposed to be productive and do my stuff here, but it’s not going well so far. I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open.

How about you? What tricks and tips do you have for insomnia? How about tips and tricks for staying awake while you’re running on little or no sleep? I’m open to all reasonable suggestions here.

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4 thoughts on “Eye opening”

Oh, insomnia. One of my oldest and most hated friends. The precise scenario you describe starts happening quite often to me when I get stressed, anxious or just (ironically) really overtired. It’s pretty awful. I always tell myself I’ll use the time to write, but when it comes to it I can’t force my sleep-deprived brain to focus on it.

Yeah, I wasn’t good for much during the insomnia either. I couldn’t read, couldn’t watch videos…and with my back hurting getting out of bed felt like more work than it was worth.

Tricks to beat it? Good question. I took yoga classes at one time, and I learned some good relaxation techniques you can do while lying in bed to calm your brain down and get your tense muscles to relax. That can help a lot, because (in my experience at least) when this happens it’s usually because the thoughts are whirling so fast you can’t shut them up.

This, I suspect, was a major part of it.

As for staying awake, forget it. A crap day with aching muscles and aching head and a total inability to concentrate is pretty inevitable. I just make the best of it however I can, sometimes by giving myself other treats (nice food, re-read a favourite book or watch a fave film, do something purely fun that I’ve put off for ages because I didn’t have time). Those things can help pick up your mood so you break the cycle of misery.

Well, I have to be at work, so I need to be something like effective when that happens. Believe it or not, I did a pretty fair imitation of an employee during that time! Ha!

And finally, exercise can help exhaust you enough physically that you can sleep better later. And sometimes it helps improve your mood, too.

I’ve heard exercise before bedtime is a mistake; will actually keep you awake. Hm. I’ll have to check into this more.

How’s that for an essay. Can you tell it happens a lot in my world? =) Hope you feel better soon.

I can tell you what not to do. Don’t watch informercials on TV all night. Sleep deprivation only makes you want that useless doodad all the more.

That’s excellent advice. Informercials always get me, never mind when I’m sleep deprived. The last thing I want to do is spend a bunch of money on another useless item I never knew existed but desperately need.

When I wake up in the night and can’t get back to sleep, I have a few strategies:

1) Eat some rice cakes because sometimes low blood sugar wakes me up and the carbs will make me sleepy again.
2) Read a peaceful type of book until I start to feel sleepy.
3) Go through a basic yoga routine to relax my muscles.

I haven’t had really bad insomia for many years, thank God. I hope and pray that you don’t have to deal with it anymore.

That carb trick doesn’t sound waist-line friendly, but I would’ve done anything to get to sleep. Thanks, Spark, GREAT suggestions! I’m a little scared of the yoga though. You would be too if you saw me.